Hermenêutica e psicoterapia

Maria Luísa Portocarrero
Universidade de Coimbra

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect the contribution of philosophical hermeneutics to psychotherapy. We first start by clarifying the meaning of philosophical hermeneutics and by analyzing its object. Second, finding a support in the two most important names of contemporary hermeneutics, both H.G. Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, we reject the naturalism to which psychotherapy reduces itself insofar as it does not take into account the close connection between man's world-of-life and its temporal, linguistic and narrative dimension. Indeed, the very center of the contribution of hermeneutics lies in the constitution of identity through ethical, linguistic and institutional mediation.